Sex offender arrested at restaurant play area

A convicted sexual predator is in custody after being arrested while loitering at a children's play area in a restaurant near Elk Grove Village, the Cook County sheriff's office said today.

Joseph O'Brien, 36, was arrested last Sunday after the manager of the restaurant in the 1900 block of East Higgins Road called to report him loitering there, according to a release from Sheriff Tom Dart's office.

Witnesses said O'Brien had been inside the indoor play area near a table where some mothers and children were seated, and had been staring at an 11-year-old girl before being asked to leave, police said.

The manager told sheriff's investigators that O'Brien had been asked to leave the play area on several other occasions on different days, police said.

O'Brien, a registered sex offender for a previous conviction, was charged with criminal trespassing and a Class 3 felony of failing to update his address with police.

He had been staying at a motel near the restaurant in Elk Grove Township, and not at his registered address in Maine Township of unincorporated Cook County, police said.

Bail was set at $75,000 during an initial appearance in Rolling Meadows Court on Dec. 24, and he remains in Cook County Jail with a next court date of 9 a.m. Jan. 9, according to the sheriff's office.

O'Brien, classified as a "sexual predator," has been arrested 24 times since 1995 and was convicted in 2001 of aggravated criminal sexual abuse/bodily harm, police said. He also was charged with failing to register as a sex offender in October 2006 and again in July 2010.